


The Stuff of Legends

by semele



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-04
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 21:17:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/pseuds/semele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katherine really doesn't mind that she's wearing somebody else's face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stuff of Legends

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by softly-me: _I am a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl_

Katherine is slightly amused by Elena's obsession with identity and self-definition; it's a modern thing, she suspects, or maybe an American thing, like when Stefan and Damon still hold on to this silly little past of theirs. None of them believes it, but Katherine really doesn't mind that she's wearing somebody else's face; after all, she is a doppelganger, a stuff of legends, she is wearing somebody else's clothes and speaking a language younger than herself; she had enough time to get bored with places that weren't on maps when she was born. Even her name doesn't really belong to her; now it has different sounds and a different melody. There are only two men left on Earth who sometimes say it right (Rebekah doesn't bother).

When Elena tries very hard to establish who she is and who she is not (or at least it seems that this is what she does), Katherine puts on something plain and goes out just for fun, does some schoolgirl shopping and smiles at the people who greet her, thinking that she's someone else. She doesn't mind. The beauty of being the doppelganger is that she gets to be all of them.

 

***

Of course there were more than just two.

It wasn't that hard to figure out, not for Katherine, and she's done her research (curiosity born out of tragic boredom). There were at least three other doppelgangers between herself and Elena, girls never discovered by anybody but her, girls who lived their mundane lives and never found out about moonstones or curses. They never fell for brothers and never had to run for their lives; they married young and bore children, and maybe they got a better deal (that's what Elena would say), but that's not how Katherine sees it.

(Once she was so curious that she came too close, and the woman grabbed her arm with surprising strength. “Do I know you from somewhere?”, she asked sharply, but Katherine just shook off her wrinkled hand, “I don't think so. I just have one of those faces.”)

She doesn't know a thing about the First.

***

One day Elena walks on her when Katherine, shamelessly dressed in Elena's clothes, goes through Ric's pictures of cave drawings. There is a moment of awkward silence, but, surprisingly, yelling never comes. It seems that Elena just gets straight to her little detective work, and Katherine is about to say something snarky about how Klaus probably wouldn't be killed by photos, but she holds her tongue because suddenly everything starts to make sense; because neither of them is here for Klaus. For the first time Elena is openly staring at her, examining every detail of her face and body, and Katherine lets her; she really can understand this kind of curiosity.

Without a word Elena gives her a picture of a knife, and really, it's strangely fitting that it should be a knife. It's ugly and sloppy, and for a second Katherine thinks that it can't be it, but then she starts laughing at herself, because expecting a lamb or a beautiful virgin was just a rookie mistake. That's just how a legend would have it (that's how a legend will have it): there was a girl, young, and sweet, and innocent, nothing like the monsters who surrounded her, and she was sacrificed on an altar of blood. Katherine looks Elena in the eye and they both nod; they are doppelgangers, so they, of all people should know how legends really work.

“I don't know anything but stories,” says Katherine after a couple of minutes, and Elena just shrugs her shoulders in a very un-Elena-like manner.

“Rebekah said that she'd been the one who forged the daggers.”

“She was a witch?”

“I guess.”

“Strong and fierce. I like her. Do you trust what Rebekah says?”

“I'm not sure.”

“No, you don't.”

“No. I don't.”


End file.
